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ChurchTechArts is the most widely-read and trusted website for production technology in the house of worship category. No-nonsense equipment reviews, production tips and philosophy of ministry discussions are all part of the three weekly posts. Written by Mike Sessler.

Alright—we’re in the home stretch! This is our last installment of our InfoComm 2016 coverage. As we wrap up in the land of audio, we’ll listen to some new speakers that were rolled out. I got to hear each one of these, and so these are first hand (or first ear…) reports.

Martin CDD Live

CDD Live 8

We started taking a serious look at CDD last year at InfoComm. I wasn’t expecting to be impressed; more low-cost boxes for small to mid-size rooms. Whatever. Or that’s what I thought until I heard them. Honestly, I was blown away at the price/performance ratio. A few months later, we set them up with some of our other favorite boxes for a shootout. Again, we were very pleased with the CDD series. I’ve since installed two systems and have been extremely happy with the way the systems turn out.

Now many people think Martin Audio and think MLA, a big, expensive, powered, very impressive line array with tons of DSP. They took their experience with MLA and applied it to CDD, adding bi-amplified power to the speakers and tweaking the enclosures a bit. They also threw in some DSP for good measure. They also added Dante connectivity.

Like last year, I knew about them going in, so I wasn’t prepared to be surprised. But when they fired up the new Live boxes, again, we were surprised at how good they sounded. The CDD Live 8 particularly blew us away, especially in light of how small it is. The subs also sound fantastic—loud, low and tight. Like the CDD line, the CDD Live line is very cost-effective, and with the build-in DSP, you could even eliminate an outboard DSP for basic systems. You know we’ll be installing a bunch of these guys.

L’Acoustics Kiva II

I’ve become a big fan of L’Acoustics over the last few years as I’ve heard more of their systems and installed a couple of them. They’re easy to tune, are voiced very consistently throughout the entire line and sound great even with stock presets. The Kiva line array is a very solid, small- to mid-sized system. It’s built on dual 6.5” LF drivers and a 1.5” compression HF driver and VDOSC waveguide. It’s a great sounding box for smaller rooms, or as delays for larger spaces.

Again, when a company rolls out a II of anything, I tend to think, “Whatever.” Then they played the Kiva II. Wow! The Kiva sounds great, but when they switched over to the II, it was like a blanket came off the speaker. While it looks the same physically (and all the hardware still works), they completely redesigned the guts. There is a ton more articulation in the upper-midrange, and they even squeezed 6 dB more output out of it! That may not sound like much, but that’s a double-double of amplifier power. And as a 16 Ohm box, you can hang a bunch of them off the new LA12x amplifier—13,600 watts at 2.7 Ohms! According to the marketing folks, LA12x sounds cooler than LA13.6x. So there you go. Great stuff from L’Acoustics. I can’t wait to set one of these up!

Bose ShowMatch

Speaking of mid-size line array systems, we finally got to see the production prototypes of the new system from Bose, dubbed ShowMatch. Though, calling it a line array is technically incorrect. It looks like a line array, but it’s really a progressive directivity array, which they have now dubbed DeltaQ™. It’s based on the same concept as RoomMatch, with multiple vertical coverage options, and different horizontal waveguides. The difference is, in ShowMatch, the waveguides are field swappable. The rigging system is very cool, and will allow for fast, flexible setups for tours.

For installs, it’s a smaller footprint than RoomMatch, but has similar voicing and output. I heard a early pre-production prototype a while back, and they sounded extremely good. Having done a few RoomMatch systems now, I’m always amazed at the accuracy of the coverage and the even intelligibility throughout the seating areas. ShowMatch will be one more arrow in our quiver full of great PAs to work with.

They also announced new PowerShare amps, which are going to be a boon to anyone who does 70V systems. Unlike most amps that have a fixes, maximum output on any given channel, PowerShare allocates power to each output based on the load. This means the entire output of the amp could be available to one channel if needed. They’re 1 RU high, so they don’t take up much rack space and are priced well. They also created a few new wall controls for remote volume.

All in all, InfoComm 2016 was a good show. Our industry has matured to the point where we’re not seeing groundbreaking new products each year, but there is a lot of good iteration happening, as well as convergence. Next time, we’ll be back to our regular scheduled programming.